Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which is a motor neuron disease, was first reported in 1869 by French doctor Jean-Martin Chartcot. ALS was known to normal people since Lou Gehrig, a famous baseball player in the United State who suffered from this disease, in 1939, and from this moment, ALS was called Lou Gehrig's disease.
The prognosis of ALS is based on clinical features, electric diagnosis tests, and the exclusion of other health states associated with the symptoms. The molecular genetic test, which can be used in clinical tests associated with some genes involved in ALS, plays an important role in genetic type determination and genetic counseling.
ALS may be inherited in an autosomal dominant, autosomal recessive, or X-linked manner. Genetic counseling and risk assessment depend on the accurate diagnosis of particular genes.
Riluzole has been known as a drug used to delay the progress of ALS. It is known that Riluzole can lower the rate of ALS progress by inhibiting excessive glutamic acid, which is considered to be one of the causes of motor neuron destruction. However, the clinical effects of Riluzole fail to alleviate ALS symptoms, and the results thereof are also not obvious in extending the tracheotomy-free survival of ALS patients receiving no tracheotomy. As described above, the genuine clinical effects of Riluzole, which is helpful to ALS patients, have been reported to be very restricted and obscure (Stewart et al, 2001). Nevertheless, there is no effective preventive or therapeutic agent for ALS, excluding Riluzole having even equivocal clinical effectiveness, and thus the development of drugs exhibiting the effects of preventing or treating ALS is needed.
Meanwhile, expression vectors as a gene delivery system for genetic therapy have been known in the conventional art. The detailed descriptions of pCK vector used in an example of the present invention are disclosed in PCT/KR1999/000855. In addition, PCT/KR2003/000548 discloses a composition, containing pCK-HGFX7 recombinant vector used in the present invention, for treating or preventing ishemic diseases or liver disorders. The entire contents of PCT/KR1999/000855 and PCT/KR2003/000548 are incorporated herein by reference.
Throughout the entire specification, many papers and patent documents are referenced and their citations are represented. The disclosure of the cited papers and patent documents are entirely incorporated by reference into the present specification and the level of the technical field within which the present invention falls, and the details of the present invention are explained more clearly.